Conflict in the Red Sea is forcing cloud giants to find a new route for the internet

U.S. cloud giants are facing steep prices to secure backup internet routes around the Red Sea as fighting rages over the Red Sea strait that carries most data cables between Europe and Asia. More than 90% of data capacity between Europe and Asia runs through cables under the Red Sea. The cables enter the sea at Bab al-Mandab, a strait less than 32 kilometers (20 miles) wide between Yemen and the African nations of Djibouti and Eritrea. The Houthis, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, seized Yemen’s side of the strait in September, including the island of Mayyun. On October 5, Saudi-backed government forces said they had retaken key positions around the strait and the port of Mocha, claims the Houthis denied. In September, Google bought a pair of fiber strands running along Turkish state pipelines, paying two to three times the roughly 6 million euros ($7 million) that newer lines crossing Turkey are expected to cost, said a person familiar with the deal, requesting anonymity because the details are not public. Long-distance fiber is usually sold with a single upfront payment covering 15 years or more of use. Buyers also pay a separate annual fee for maintenance. Microsoft said on September 23 that it plans to invest more than $400 million in subsea and land links across the Middle East by 2030. Iraq also signed a contract with Qatari telecom company Ooredoo on September 10 to carry data toward Europe through an underground route from the southern port of Al-Faw. Almost all major cloud companies are looking for backup routes around the Red Sea, the person told Rest of World. Google and Meta have started sending some live traffic through a land route across Iraq that they had previously held in reserve, the person said. Google and Meta did not respond to Rest of World’s requests for comment by the time of publication. With Yemen’s side of the strait now contested, a single cable cut there could take months to fix, because repair crews need permission and safety guarantees to work in the water, industry experts told Rest of World. Switching to another sea cable does not help because almost all of them pass through the same narrow gap, they said. “You can have capacity on multiple cables, but if they’re all routed through the same tight expanse of water, suddenly your route resilience isn’t looking so resilient,” said Paul Brodsky, senior research manager at TeleGeography, a U.S. research firm that tracks telecommunications infrastructure worldwide. “The repair ship issue is very real.” Keeping internet on Three Red Sea cables were damaged in 2024, most likely by the anchor of a drifting cargo ship that a missile launched by the Iran-backed Houthis had disabled. Those repairs took months because crews had to wait a long time for permits, Brodsky said. “Depending on the availability of a repair ship, a cable repair might take one to two weeks,” Doug Madory, head of internet analysis at Santa Clara-based Infoblox, which runs core network services and tracks how internet traffic moves, told Rest of World. “But the last time there were cable cuts in this body of water, repairs took months because the repair ships needed assurances they would not be fired upon.” The last time there were cable cuts in this body of water, repairs took months.”Doug Madory, head of internet analysis firm Infoblox Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon use about three-quarters of the world’s international internet bandwidth, according to TeleGeography. When Iranian drones struck Amazon’s data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in March, bank and payment apps in the region stopped working, and U.S. software company Snowflake reported service disruptions. Since the start of September, cloud companies have been telling operators the minimum number of fiber strands they will start using, and by when, Martin Frank, a strategic adviser at IQ Networks, an Iraqi company that sells capacity on a fiber line it built from southern Iraq to the Turkish border, told Rest of World. Cloud companies will likely test their land backups so they are ready if a sea cable breaks, Madory said. Until then, most of their data will keep flowing under the sea. “Submarine cable routes are much cheaper, which is why they are so preferred,” he said. “I would expect land route alternatives to remain dormant until pressed into service due to a cable cut.” Cloud companies have been hoping Yemen would settle down under a normal administration, Frank said. What would end that hope is what he called an Afghanistan scenario, in which the international community accepts the reality on the ground as the new normal. “From what I see and hear, I would say that this scenario is getting more and more priced in by the day,” Frank said.